WikiLeaks cables point to China in Google hack

Much has been written and broadcast over the past 24- hour news cycle about the diplomatic fallout of the latest WikiLeaks caper.

Today, some news outlets are focusing on a subset of the leaked cables that point to China's Politburo as the orchestrator of last January's Operation Aurora, the systematic hacking of the internal networks of at least 30 high-profile corporations, especially Google.

Cyberspies are "also targeting corporations and influential individuals in an attempt to unravel the infrastructure of the targeted country," says Khera. "Whether it is trade secrets, intellectual property, or government secrets, foreign perpetrators will continue to cause chaos for the U.S. cybersecurity infrastructure, unless we can anticipate these attacks."

Operation Aurora came to light last January after Google went public about it, intimating that the Chinese government played a role in hacking into its databases as part of a campaign to persecute political dissidents. The incident set off an international furor, as we reported in this cover story, and Google ultimately shut down its Beijing operations.

Among the 250,000 U.S. Embassy cables released by WikiLeaks are exchanges between a Chinese contact and the U.S. embassy in Beijing; one dispatch describes a Chinese source informing the U.S. Embassy that China's Politburo sanctioned the attack on Google.

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